TNL Take: In this edition of "5 Questions With", we speak with Michiel Bakker, CEO of GINX Esports TV. Michiel was previously with MTV Networks Europe as well as Chairman of Nickelodeon and Paramount Networks. He is now focusing on growing GINX Esports TV digital and social footprint alongside the TV channel in multiple international markets. Michiel will also be speaking at Esports BAR, the leading B2B event for esports.

Ginx.tv is currently the largest esports TV channel globally. As esports has grown digitally, where does Ginx see esports on TV?

We see the role of TV in the esports ecosystem as extending the reach of esports into mainstream sports audiences. Production values and perhaps more importantly, entertainment value, are increasing all the time; which helps us stand alongside more traditional sports channels. When more of the audience understand the fundamentals of the games being played, the more they can share in the passion. That’s why Ginx is deliberately taking an inclusive stance towards non-core and core gamers alike.

How many countries is Ginx.tv currently available and what are your expansion goals for 2018?

Right now GINX Esports TV is available in more than 50 million households in over 50 territories worldwide. For 2018, we want to grow that by 50% to 75 million households with hopefully a significant announcement shortly.

You currently have several shows in production including "This Week in Esports", "The Bridge", and "IRL" - talk about the importance of shoulder content in addition to esports events and tournaments?

We love telling stories and that’s what TV is good at. If anything, I’d like to do a lot more storytelling with the channel and our plans are constantly evolving. I see it as a key purpose for Ginx, one where we can add real value to esports overall, which is to tell the stories of the players, the teams and the behind-the-scenes at tournaments - as well as broadcasting the events themselves. Passion, emotion. dedication, pain, sacrifice, sublime mastery and utter elation are all present in esports and all fertile ground for storytelling.

What are your plans to enter the US Market?

Obviously the US is a massive esports market and although we are already present through the Sony Playstation Vue service, as well as in some smaller cable systems in certain states, we have well-developed plans to enter the US market in the near term but it is just a little to early to share those at this moment.

You also offer the ability to watch digitally on Ginx.tv - what percentagee of your audience is watching digitally vs. TV?

The vast majority of our audience is watching us through TV, we are a TV station after all. Having said that, we are working very hard to expand the digital footprint around and alongside the TV channel. Our aim is to build and scale a digital community alongside the TV channel. In addition to making improvements to our existing portfolio of digital products, be that our own Ginx TV Player or our presence on platforms like Roku and Amazon, our plans centre around content syndication and extending our presence on mobile.

One of their sites was averaging around 1.85M page views per month with 5 ads on the page, generating ~9M+ "ad impressions" per month. The CPM - Cost Per 1,000 Impressions aka How Sites Make Money - averaged just under $3 last year. So in an absolute perfect world scenario, the site would generate about $300,000+ a year which isn't bad. However, perfect worlds don't exist, especially not in media

Generally ad block is anywhere from 25%-50% depending on content. However, gaming/eSports has the highest ad block rate of any type of media content. Riad confirmed that ~80% of site users were using ad block which is absolutely in line with both gaming media sites and some streaming content

There are a lot of reasons why this is happening but here's 1 very simple chart to illustrate a major point:

There's Google and Facebook and then Everyone Else (Photo: Poynter.org)

Analysis from Pivotal Research group estimated that 71% of all digital advertising went to the two industry behemoths, Google and Facebook, while the trillion other publishers, media companies, social networks, and programmatic middlemen fight for the ever dwindling portion of the pixelated pie.

Now throw in Oath (Verizon/Yahoo/AOL), Twitter, Snapchat and 5 companies have a lock on ~80% of the digital ad market.

I’ve been in publishing professionally since 1981, but anyone can write about media these days, and most of the sites that do are staffed with those whose very first job in media was to do so. Some end up doing a great job and are supported by editors and revenue producers. Others come and go so frequently that it is hard to chronicle their launch and death. But success is not merely a matter of doing one thing well: content or design or technology is not enough in isolation, nor is having one great idea.

The media business, like making a film, involves many different skills, great ideas, creativity, sufficient funding, license to experiment. Then a lot of luck.